I recently purcharsed an 86mm carbon clincher front wheel from Carbonzone through ebay. It was the newer 27mm wide model. I was looking for a wheel that would be lighter and easier to handle in strong winds than the original specialized trispoke that I use currently. This wheel would be used mostly for riding flat to rolling time trials of which I ride about 20 a year. Most of the courses have light traffic and very little braking is required. I've now had three rides on this wheel and here are my observations so far.The wheels arrived at my home in Eastern Canada ten days after I ordered them, and the box was in perfect condition, no dents or holes. The price of the wheel was $295US and I paid no import duties. Out of the box the wheel was radially true but required a few quarter turns to make them true laterally. The novatech hub is very smooth and quiet and the wheel seem to spin forever.The dimensions of the rim were as described on carbonzones website, and the inside of the rim was clean and free of any sharp edges.23mm Michelin pro race tires went on and off way too easily using only my hands and had to be deflated a couple of times to eliminate bulges that formed where the tire failed to hook under the rim. I also tried a continental 24mm that went on using hands only but seated better the first time it was inflated. The valve hole was too small to allow my valve extender to go through, but after a bit of sanding and filing of both the hole and the extender the problem was solved.One bothersome feature of this particular rim is a slight bulge in one spot that causes a strong pulse when braking, visually the wheel looks very true, and the bulge is only about 1mm however the pulse is very pronounced.The wheel felt good when I got it out on the road, on a day of light winds , there were no handling issues at all. The next day provided strong gusty winds in the 40km/hr range , and the bike was of course a handful at times. The next day winds were in the steady 15km range and handling was fine, my feeling a this point would be that these deep profile wheels handle more predictably and consistently than the trispoke, but there are days that I would choose to leave them at home.The pulsing aside, I was surprised by how well this wheel stopped using the supplied black pads on the basalt brake track. I've never owned or ridden a carbon wheel before and had read many reports of poor braking. These seem to stop just as well as any alloy rim that I've used. The other thing that was new to me as a first time user was the resonating hum of the carbon wheel, which I stopped noticing after a while.If this wheel proves to be faster than the Campagnolo Vento wheel that I also use for TT's (it's always been faster than the trispoke)I'll consider this a worthwhile purchase and if not it will likely get sold.I'll keep riding this wheel until we get snow , and hopefully report again as I gain more experience with it.Thanks

is there any company doing the 25mm wide wheels in 60+ mm aside from carbonzone? checked farsports, but it doesn't look like they do the rims alone, and light-bicycle doesn't do the u-shaped rim for anything outside the 45mm.

Two questions:1. What's considered "wide" for aero wheels these days? 23mm? 25mm? 27mm? Zipp says they're 26.5, Reynolds are 26.2. Enve is 26mm.2. Is there a company that does lightweight ~50mm "wide" tubulars? I got a farsports 88mm tubular wheelset that weights 1450g. Most of these companies are selling 50mm wide tubular wheels that weigh this much. For narrow 50mm tubulars, farsports has a ~350g rim that'll build up at 1150g. Does it really take that much more material to make a rim 5mm wider?

I have a set of the Farsports 24mm-wide (50mm) deep rims. They are a nice shape, though not a lot to compare them to. I like the wider (17mm) inner width. One thing is that Farsports' idea of high-temp (220F for my rims) is lower than others. I had to retension the wheels after a few hundred miles, but I still think they were/are good value. Braking leaves a lot to be desired , but I guess this is pretty par for the course with carbon.

I just bought a set of Light Bicycle U45 rims without braking surface for road disc-brake wheels I am building myself. Quality seems a bit better than Farsports from perspective of the surface finish, but that may just be differences in matte UD (Farsports) and matte 3k (LB). Decided to build myself this time. A little more expensive, but LB didn't offer hub choice I was looking for, and I would rather use CX Ray spokes than Pillar equiv, due to familiarity. Weight came in very close to advertised average (449g and 453g, for advertised 450g).

Hey guys old member here. Old account was having problems so created a new one .

I bought a pair of 23mm wide 50mm deep carbon clinchers from Helin Lius ebay store carbonspeedcycle 2 days ago. Helin told me that they would take ~4 days to build and 7-10 days to arrive after that. I was tossing up these or some of the farsports clinchers or the LB45's however these came out on sale to be over $100 cheaper. Wheels will be used mostly for criteriums and club road races where I cannot be bothered running the risk of tubs. Ordered matte ud rims, red nipples and an 11 speed shimano/sram freehub as my team bike next year will have 11 speed sram red. Will be running them 10 speed with the spacer for the time being though.

Has anyone else tried any of the wide wheels from Helin Liu / carbonspeedcycle?

Hey guys old member here. Old account was having problems so created a new one .

I bought a pair of 23mm wide 50mm deep carbon clinchers from Helin Lius ebay store carbonspeedcycle 2 days ago. Helin told me that they would take ~4 days to build and 7-10 days to arrive after that. I was tossing up these or some of the farsports clinchers or the LB45's however these came out on sale to be over $100 cheaper. Wheels will be used mostly for criteriums and club road races where I cannot be bothered running the risk of tubs. Ordered matte ud rims, red nipples and an 11 speed shimano/sram freehub as my team bike next year will have 11 speed sram red. Will be running them 10 speed with the spacer for the time being though.

Has anyone else tried any of the wide wheels from Helin Liu / carbonspeedcycle?

I can't speak to the durability of the wheels but i can speak regarding the design. Essentially what you bought was a slightly wider V-shape clincher wheel, aka pre Firecrest. Its good and it'll work a lot better than a box wheel that's for sure but its not a newer design. To put it into context a 303 Firecrest, and the LB 45 clone, is as aero as a 80 mm V shape rim and far better in a crosswind.

I am aware they are not one of the new 'aero' shapes, I was going to purchase the 20.5mm version of the wheels but as these where discounted and I have been keen in trying some wider profile rims/wheels out I thought I would give them a crack. As I said these will mostly be used for crits a lot of which mine involve an uphill sprint nearly flat out every lap so went for these over some of the heavier more 'aero' shaped wheels out there

To put it into context a 303 Firecrest, and the LB 45 clone, is as aero as a 80 mm V shape rim and far better in a crosswind.

If you can believe Reynolds their extremely pointy latest design has very good aero properties. Plus a lot of users report good crosswind performance.

Makes me wonder if the rim width (relative to the tire) is more important than rim shape...

Not sure on that one, the whole point of the wide rims in the first place was to create a virtual airfoil on the trailing edge of each wheel. In order to do that the rim has to be wider than the tire. Now if the V-shape is wide enough and so wide that the tire has less width than the rim, it might be possible to create the Virtual Airfoil that way. However, the shape would have to be optimized for that and if you look at the Reynolds it does flatten out towards the tire, so it could be the case on that wheel. I think its both factors, width and shape.

V-shape rims is like riding a TT bike backwards! It doesn't work like that and creates a lot of drag. It'll still be more aero than a round tube bike but not by much.

A very wide V shape could possibly create a virtual airfoil but I doubt it would do it as well as say a 303 Firecrest. However the leading edge of the wheel would possibly be more aero than the 303 FC and overall they could be pretty close.

Wheel design is fascinating to me as its a balance between being aero on the leading edge of the wheel and the trialing edge at the same time.

The best design I think is one that finds the wheel shape that works best for the front wheel and then the best design for the rear wheel. Each one would be slightly different as there are tubes and legs pedaling causing all kinds of wind flow fluctuations. I think this is what you will see happening as the next evolution. Enve i think is doing the right thing by starting along that path.

Straight line, headwind, those Reynolds are probably very aero and well done. In a xwind, not so much.

They have studied the common angles of wind riders encounter during races/riding from the peloton. That is how they came up with 10-15 degrees as an optimum angle to design aerodynamically for.

Hence, they then came up with the toroidal shape with the blunt/fatter section of the rim where the spokes are, and the slightly narrow brake track than the fattest part of the rim.

So, as the angle of wind increases, they are way more aero than the deep-V design, because when you are riding in the pack, or solo, it is highly unlikely, except track racing, you will be in a direct headwind all the time, or now wind at all.

I know the marketing story... but 10-15 deg isn't the yaw that is most important to me in TTs... more like half that. They aren't *designed* for 10-15 deg... rather this is the place where you *can* make a deep rim have less drag than a shallow one by delaying stall. Most people seem to think the Firecrests are good in crosswinds, which is a nice feature. But based on the testing I've seen, the new Zipps don't really have less drag than the old ones... unless you put a fat tire on them. Dig up some tests of the old 808 and the new one, and curves look nearly identical.

I haven't seen any independent aero tests of the Reynolds rims, but oddly every user opinion I've seen states they are stable in crosswinds... which I don't think would happen unless stall was delayed out to high yaw like the other good rims.

Have any of you actually ever had a difficult time handling your bike with 50-60mm wheels in cross winds? People love talking about it but I have never had any issues with it. Maybe it's because I am big.

Have any of you actually ever had a difficult time handling your bike with 50-60mm wheels in cross winds? People love talking about it but I have never had any issues with it. Maybe it's because I am big.

I've done some big mountain descents after races here in California where the wind was gusting pretty hard and I got blown around enough that I slowed down. I've been blown around on regular rims too, but it can be worse on deep section rims. My race weight over the years has been 138-144 lbs.

A consistent wind is not so bad (just don't try to ride no hands). Random gusts are more difficult to handle.

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